Search This Blog

Superman II

(Great Britain/USA, 1980, 127 minutes)

Superman must face three villains who survived the explosion of Krypton and are threatening Earth, while facing the truth about his own feelings for Lois Lane. Slight comic-book adventure taking up a number of loose ends from the first Superman, throwing away some good ideas in rather rote scripting; not as good as the original, though closer to a comic-strip spirit, and even the trick effects seem cheaper. The film was mostly shot by Richard Donner simultaneously with the original, but finished by Richard Lester, who had worked as a consulting producer on the first film and was offered the job after Donner and producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind fell out; in 2006, Donner was given by Warners the chance to put together his original (and vastly superior) vision for Superman II, in a 110-minute cut assembled by Michael Thau and released on DVD.